Volvo Offers Driver Training Scheme

The UK fleet division of Volvo Cars UK has teamed up with Ultimate Car Control to offer a unique and valuable training programme for company car drivers. Ultimate Car Control (UCC) spent five and a half years developing a programme to create a scheme that fleets can sign up to – to meet their legal obligation and protect their employees.

UCC developed a scheme called Excellence in Professional Driving (EPD), drivers take part in one day courses and use new or used Volvo S60 models, which has been chosen by the manufacturer for its safety specifications and driver aid technologies.

The one-day driving course is split into two sessions - the first is a classroom-based session covering topics such as hazard perception, the effects of drugs and alcohol on drivers, as well as finding out how vehicle safety systems such as anti-lock brakes actually work. The second part is dynamic driver training, where participants learn how a car behaves in extreme situations and what a driver can do to keep control.

Under Health & Safety legislation and Duty of Care requirements organisations are now legally obliged to develop company policies that protect employees using their car for work purposes. Driver training therefore has become very popular and highly sought after. But all too often programmes are developed to meet the basic requirements of the law, rather than focusing on the needs of individual drivers.

Robb Gravett, former British Touring Car Champion and founder of UCC, said "When we started developing EPD, we did a lot of research into the sector and found that there was no established standard for existing courses. They had no reproducibility and took no account of the different skills and aptitudes of individual drivers. In short, many were just a box ticking exercise; a token effort by companies to meet their legal obligations.”